中文摘要：

作为公司组织契约中的一个经济代理人，会计师事务所，特别是规模大的会计师事务所，为了“自身效用最大化”，对于不同盈余管理的公司，往往表现出不一致的审计质量。本文的经验数据支持这一观点。结合我国制度背景下的特殊配股现象，我们把配股公司和非配股公司区分为高盈余管理的公司和低盈余管理的公司，并以此来研究大规模会计师事务所（即国际大所和国内十大，以下简称“大所”）的审计质量对这两类公司盈余管理的影响。研究结果表明，大所对配股公司盈余管理的抑制要显著高于其对非配股公司盈余管理的抑制；大所比其它事务所更能对配股公司的盈余管理进行显著抑制，但是大所在对非配股公司盈余管理的抑制上和其他事务所没有显著差异；大所对所有样本公司（即配股公司和非配股公司）总体上并没有表现出比其他事务所显著高的审计质量。这说明，大所具有“相机决策”的理性经济人行为，对不同盈余管理的公司采取不同的审计质量，大所的审计质量并不是一贯的高。

英文摘要：

This study examines the persistent monitoring effect of big auditors on earnings management of right issuers and non-issuers in the poor institutional setting of China. We argue that, as economic agents per se, big auditors, defined as international big auditors or domestic biglO auditors in China, have incentives to maximize their own utilities. Their utility-maximization behaviors would result in their various audit quality according to a broad variety of earnings management of their clients. Our results support this conjecture. We find evidence that compared to small auditors, big auditors monitor earnings management in the rights issuers more effectively, as earnings management is measured by positive discretionary accruals and absolute discretionary accruals. This monitoring effect of big auditors is significantly stronger for the group with fight offerings than that without right offerings, because discretionary accruals and positive discretionary accruals of fights issuers are significantly higher than those of non-issuers. However, the evidence superficially suggests that big auditors don＇t constrain earnings management of the whole sample firms consisting of both fights issuers and non-issuers more effectively than small ones.